Sébastien Leclerc was one of the rare artists of the end of the seventeenth century who dreamed of the vignette in the midst of this invasion of pompous commonplace. Successor of Callot in manner, induced by the publishers, he began this style with a romance of La Calprenède, and continued with the _Promenade de St. Germain_ of Louis le Laboureur, bailie of Montmorency, of whom Boileau said such curious things. This is one of the rarest books of Leclerc, and we reproduce one of the pages, with a charming tailpiece, which comes very near those of the eighteenth century. There was, moreover, a charm in this ingenious designer; he adorned the works of his contemporaries with graceful vignettes and decorations full of suppleness. It may be believed, besides, that he did not remain behind his _confrères_ in figure composition or allegorical and Divine emblems. His art did not throw off the errors of the existing school; he was content not to copy any one and to make his works truly his own. Such were, for example, the vignettes of the _Histoire de Turenne_, where the heads of the chapters, the ornamented letters, and the tailpieces, harmoniously agree, and make the book, a little heavy in impression, a most agreeable work. Leclerc then found himself ready to design vignettes for the works of Racine for the publisher, Claude Barbin, another name frequently encountered in Boileau. The title of Vol. ii. merits attention. The same year of this last publication, 1676, Sébastien Leclerc illustrated the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid for Benserade, the engraving of which cost the King more than 10,000 livres. Thus adorned, the book had not a bad appearance, but a satirist of the time, Hardin very probably, made on it this quatrain:-- "Mais quant à moi j'en trouve tout fort beau: Papier, dorure, images, caractère, Hormis les vers qu'il fallait laisser faire A La Fontaine." It may be imagined what an engraver could produce working from 1650 and dying in 1715, that is, a life of work the longest that could be hoped for. Leclerc was the absolute contemporary of the King. He died, like him, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, leaving work widely scattered among books, funeral orations, and placards. After the example of Callot and Bosse, he did not disdain satire. One of his prettiest vignettes served to illustrate some pamphlet of Richesource against the journalists of his time; it represents a dandy of about 1679 offering his gazette.